


What Have I Done?

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 13:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7223413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Audrey no longer recognises the person she has become.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Have I Done?

It was only after Audrey had put down the paperweight that she fully understood what she had almost done.

At the time, she had only had one thought in her mind: If Noah managed to recover any viable footage from that security camera, he would know everything: her attempts to recover any items of Piper’s that might be traced back to her, but worse than that, the fact that she had found Jake there, dead, with that message to her attached to his body, and had turned and run away. 

What kind of person had she become, to have turned her back and walked away, to still be pretending she knew nothing of Jake’s death, knowing how worried Brooke was, much as she put up a front in front of their friends? Because Brooke had become a friend now, much as Audrey had hated her and the rest of her friends back when Emma first started hanging out with them. Even Jake, much as he could be an idiot sometimes, had become kind of a friend in his own way. He hadn’t deserved that at all. 

In one of her letters to Piper, Audrey had apparently spoken of Brooke and Jake saying that she could kill them sometimes. She couldn’t even remember what had made her say that now, wouldn’t even remember she’d said it if it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d seen it again on one of those copies of the letters that had appeared in the cinema. But she knew she must have been venting, never actually meant it. What had she set in motion with that one throwaway phrase?

Sometimes, Audrey had tried to tell herself that even if she had never contacted Piper, it might not have made a lot of difference. Piper’s issues around Brandon James’s death and abandonment by Mrs Duval would still have existed whether Audrey had contacted her or not, and who knew, maybe she would have arrived in town anyway. But then she remembers Rachel, killed by Piper as a warning to Audrey of what would happen if she walked away now, and Riley, who Emma may still have believed was killed purely because she’d said “Please don’t hurt Brooke” on the phone that time but Audrey knew it was really because of her own fears of losing Noah to her, and knows she can’t use that justification. Their deaths are on her.

Supposing it had happened that way, that Piper had still come to town but Audrey hadn’t worked with her. She wouldn’t be the same Audrey Jensen. No one could ever be the same again after that. But she wouldn’t be changed in quite the same way. She’d still be able to look at herself in the mirror, to see herself the way her friends saw her. And she could look at Noah, so determined to find the truth, and could share his enthusiasm.

Noah. She still couldn’t believe what she had almost done. Noah’s friendship was the one thing that had kept her going when Emma had first ditched her for Will’s crowd, when Nina had shared that video of her and Rachel to everyone in Lakewood. And yet there she’d stood, with that bookend in her hand, ready to strike him over the head with it.

There hadn’t been time to think. All she was thinking was that she had to stop him viewing that footage. But now that she had had time, once it was clear he wasn’t going to get anywhere with it, the possibilities of what could have happened were flashing before her eyes. A future where Noah recovered, remembered what had happened, and realised that Piper’s accomplice had been right under his nose all along. Or a future with no Noah at all, no best friend to make her laugh, to make her feel better when everything was going wrong around her.

She’d been so determined to keep her secret, to continue living her life the way it was. Now Audrey understands that things can never be normal again.


End file.
